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Latest China Brief Articles
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A Chinese Starlink? PRC Views on Building a Satellite Internet Megaconstellation
Introduction Billions of people around the world depend on the internet each day to make government, commercial, or personal transactions, and millions more users are being added each year. However, high-speed, reliable, and affordable internet services are not yet accessible to everyone. As Zhang Monan,... MORE
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Factional Strife Intensifies as Xi Strives to Consolidate Power
More evidence has emerged of a ferocious power struggle between China’s supreme leader, President Xi Jinping and powerful factions and personages including former Vice-President Zeng Qinghong and current Vice President Wang Qishan. Not-so-subtle instances of in-fighting among these influential figures and their cliques have emerged... MORE
New Editor’s Introductory Note
The changes currently underway in China are immense and their outcome uncertain. 2021 has been a momentous year in Chinese politics, with more big changes set to come out of the Communist Party Central Committee's sixth plenum in November. Next year will lead up to... MORE
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China’s Development of Hypersonic Missiles and Thought on Hypersonic Defense
Introduction Hypersonic weapons are defined as able to travel at speeds above Mach 5 and can be broadly classified into two types: hypersonic glide vehicles (HGV) and hypersonic cruise missiles (HCM). The former is launched into the upper atmosphere via ballistic missiles. The HGV is... MORE
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Win Some, Lose Some: China’s Campaign for Global Media Influence
Introduction In 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping instructed the state-owned China Global Television Network (CGTN) to “tell China’s story well” (讲好中国的故事, jiang hao zhongguo de gushi) (Global Times, December 31, 2016). Xi’s exhortations entwine with his broader ambitions to increase China’s “international discourse power” (国际话语权,... MORE
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Opportunities and Challenges for China’s Plans in Afghanistan
Introduction In a September meeting between China’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Wang Yu and Afghanistan's acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, China declared that its first batch of humanitarian aid will reach Afghanistan before the arrival of winter. (The News, September 28). The emergency humanitarian aid is... MORE
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Far From a Panopticon, Social Credit Focuses on Legal Violations
Introduction Two new pieces of draft authority on China’s social credit system, directories of data inputs and punitive outputs from the General Office of the State Council, provide further clarity into the system’s ultimate form and purposes.[1] These official guidance documents present a picture of... MORE
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In China’s Shifting Historical Narrative, “War of Resistance” with Japan Retains Key Role
Last month, China commemorated the 90th anniversary of the September 18 incident— the false flag railway explosion that sparked Imperial Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931. In China’s official historical narrative, the incident, which is colloquially known simply as "9-18” (九一八, jiu yiba), marks the... MORE
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Xi Facing Opposition on Different Fronts in Run-Up to Key Party Plenum
Introduction A controversy is raging among the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over General Secretary Xi Jinping’s advocacy of “common prosperity,” which has included forcing giant private enterprises to share their wealth with less privileged sectors (China Brief, August 26). At the... MORE
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Beijing’s Growing Influence on the Global Undersea Cable Network
Introduction The vast majority of intercontinental internet traffic traverses submarine cables laid across the ocean floor. Private and state-owned firms have long invested in these submarine cables to carry internet traffic and other data, often in cooperation with one another due to the high costs... MORE